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Developmental Biology Boot Camp

Common Lung Disease in Humans

Common Lung Disease in Humans

The most common lung diseases in humans are:

  • Asthma– Inflamed airways that can have worsening symptoms in conjunction with allergies and mucus. When the airways become tightened, it can be difficult to breathe. A lot of children have asthma. While there is no cure, there is an efficient treatment.
    • Symptoms: While the most common symptom is wheezing, it can be accompanied by shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain, chronic coughing, and trouble sleeping due to coughing.
    • Treatment: By following a plan prescribed by a physician, the symptoms can be controlled. Often symptoms can be controlled with the use of an inhaled corticosteroids daily.
    • Can flies be used in researching asthma? Genetics research has shown that there are several asthma susceptibility genes. Heritability of asthma is 50-60%. While flies lack a immune system and therefore allergies(a common trigger of asthma), they have been used in some asthma development studies. Flies have several genes that have homologs in humans that are known to cause asthma, including FLG, TNF, and CD14. When RNAi is used to knock down several of the genes responsible for asthma, there are results that have decreased immunity or have disrupted the ability of the branching to occur in the fly.
  • Bronchitis–  Inflammation of the bronchial tubes, which are tubes that allow passage of air into the lungs. It is a common type of COPD(below). Bronchitis is caused by the production a lot of mucus
    • Symptoms: Often the symptoms for this disease are coughing and difficulty breathing. Since there is so much mucus being produced, coughing up mucus is also observable. Fatigue, shortness of breath, fever and chest  discomfort may also accompany this condition.
    • Treatment: After a chest x-ray diagnosis, treatment is often just over the counter cough medicine. Usually Bronchitis will go away by itself, however, if it persists, a physician may prescribe an antibiotic.
    • Can flies be used in researching Bronchitis? Unfortunately at this time, no research has been done with bronchitis. This makes sense considering the cause of this disease is often cigarette smoke or environmental pressures, meaning there is no genetic reasoning behind this disease. Drosophila do not have immune adaptive immunity, so this makes it challenging to study this condition in flies.
  • COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease): A chronic inflammatory lung disease that is characterized by obstructive airflow to the lungs.
    • Symptoms: Shortness of breath, wheezing, chest tightness, clearing of throat frequently are common symptoms. COPD is found usually in adults, particularly ones that have smoked. The timeline to be diagnosed is to have these symptoms for 3 months to 2 years.
    • Treatment: After being diagnosed through a pulmonary function test, bronchodilators can be used to relax the muscles around the airway, or inhaled steroids.
    • Can flies be used in researching COPD? Similar to asthma, we can use the fly to study narrowing airway tubes associated with the tracheal system.
  • Lung Cancer: Type of cancer that develops initially in the lungs. This is the leading cause for cancer deaths in the United States.
    • Symptoms: Cough that does not go away, coughing up blood, shortness of breath, chest pain, and hoarseness are some of the symptoms associated with lung cancer.
    • Treatment: Unfortunately, the survival rate for this disease is not very high, at only 17%.  Surgery to remove the tumor, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are the main treatments for this disease.
    • Can flies be used in researching Lung Cancer? Drosophila have been used to study invasion and metastasis of the cancer cells. IN addition, a genome wide screen identified a evolutionarily conserved cancer suppressor. Also candidate therapeutics have been used in Drosophila and shown to be effective.
  • Lung Infection: An infection caused by bacteria or viruses.
    • Symptoms: Symptoms that are often associated with a cold.
    • Treatment: If the cause is a virus, time is the only treatment, but cough suppressants may be prescribed to alleviate some of the symptoms. However, if the cold symptoms persist, it may be caused by bacteria and so an antibiotic can be prescribed.
    • Can flies be used in researching Lung Infection? Similar to Bronchitis, there has not been any research done with the fly with this at this time. This is due to Drosophila not having an  adaptive immune system, so this makes it challenging to study this condition in flies.

Other Respiratory Diseases Studied in Drosophila

Since Drosophila  have great systems of invagination and formation of several tubes associated with the tracheal system, branching disorders in humans such as Bronchopulmonary dysplasia.

Funding Sources for Common Lung Disorders

There are many sources that provide funding for research of lung diseases. Some of them are:

  • American Lung Association : The American Lung Association was founded in 1904 in order to fight Tuberculosis. This organization has the mission of saving lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease. This program is ran completely by donations.
  • LungCAN  : The Lung Cancer Action Network  is a support network that provides information about lung cancer with the goal of raising awareness of the realities of lung  cancer. Through this awareness, they are able to raise money to increase the funding for detection, treatment and ultimately a cure for lung cancer.
  • CHEST Foundation : The CHEST Foundation is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1996. This group focuses on providing support for research in pulmonary care, in addition to providing education for the community as well as patients diagnosed with different types of lung disease.
  • LUNGevity Foundation : This foundation was founded in 2001 by people who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. However, LUNGevity was upgraded in 2010 to support not only finding a cure for lung cancer, but merged with Protect Your Lungs to have the new mission of providing support of increasing quality of life of people with lung cancer. This group focuses on assisting research involved with lung cancer.

 

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